


No Tears For the Creatures of the Night

by HarveyWallbanger



Series: You're Part of the Life I've Never Had [1]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Extremely unsanitary, M/M, Necrophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-05-27 16:31:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15028646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyWallbanger/pseuds/HarveyWallbanger
Summary: Makes you go where you can't go.  Makes you want what you can't have.





	1. No Tears

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MillicentCordelia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MillicentCordelia/gifts).



> The title of this story comes from the song No Tears, by Tuxedomoon, and the quote in the summary from Desire, also by Tuxedomoon. The chapter headings and summaries come from No Tears, and from The Three Shadows Part III, by Bauhaus.  
> Super, ultra, deluxe disclaimer: This is a work of fiction, as is the source material upon which it's based. It is a disturbing story, and it's supposed to be a disturbing story. I do not endorse anything that happens in this story. Necrophilia is illegal for a reason; don't do it. Don't do any crime.  
> I am not involved in the production of Gotham, and this school is not involved in the production of Gotham. No one pays me to do this. Do not try any of this at home. Thank you, and good night.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My eyes are dry.

For a while, he just walks around. His shoulder hurts, and his face hurts, his whole body hurts, but it’s a beautiful night. It’s so dark, darker than the city’s ever been. The sounds of the city move like something carried on the tides; collecting here, and fleeing from there. Jeremiah passes through blocks choked with screams, gunfire, laughter only to find himself, a few streets down, within the silence of the grave. Truly, the silence has a solid quality. It’s thick, but soft, like fur. Silence is bestial; the leavings of the noise that scrapes the humanity from the asphalt and bricks. Noise again, and after the silence, it’s welcome. One needs the other.  
Without realizing it, he’s made his way to the cemetery. At first, he’s not even sure where he is. He only sees the gate, the trees; feels the grass underfoot. Here and there, shapes in black move furtively in the moonlight. A head turns, showing him a totally white face. The eyes regard him impassively before turning back to a bottle. Further in, there aren’t even those creatures. Now, there is the toot-toot of an owl; a scream that doesn’t sound human. The stars clot the sky in configurations that seem to spin even when Jeremiah is perfectly still.  
Jeremiah had Jerome’s body moved into a crypt, though he’s not precisely sure where. By flashlight, he searches, and in one finally finds the legend “I.P. Frehley” scrawled in red lipstick. So, here, then. The slab before the niche comes off easily with a little prying. It’s another matter to haul out the coffin. With his shoulder, he has to tug at it a little at a time with one hand. By the time he’s yanked it out, and it’s crashed to the floor with the suggestion of cracking marble tiles, he’s sweating profusely, and he feels dizzy. Still. A job well-done. The crypt is cold, but on the inside, he’s hot, but he’s still cold, but he’s hot, so he takes off his jacket. He has to peel it from his shoulder, the material complaining as it stretches away from his blood-soaked shirt. He does the vest, too. And his tie. He finds a place to prop up the flashlight. He looks down.  
The casket’s still closed.  
He gets down on his knees, and lifts the latches.  
And there is Jerome, like a mussel shrinking in its shell. Where once he was all color, all sound, he’s silent and ashen. Just a pale, dumb wad of humanity. Smiling, Jeremiah pulls Jerome up by his shoulders, kisses his motionless mouth. From Jerome rises a queer scent, like… hand lotion and floor wax and spun sugar. Waxy, and plastic, and cloying. Somewhere in Jeremiah, below in unmappable depths, beneath what feels like leagues of dark water, something recoils. It’s down so low, that it’s easy to ignore. The scent begins to remind him of the air freshener Lilah sprayed around liberally before her dates came over. It never quite covered up the smell of new cigarette on old furniture. Nor does this, now, quite conceal the suggestion of rot. It’s fitting. Jerome was already dead, once. It’s probably not something one fully gets over. Gently, Jeremiah lifts Jerome’s upper lip until he can see the embalmer’s thread. His eyelids are sewn shut, too, a fragile line that would jerk with his lashes, if the muscles controlling the lids could still move. Jeremiah kisses him again. Chastity is enforced by the stitches. Still, Jeremiah can lick the still lips, which bear the fatty thickness of pink paint, its insipid and oily taste. On his cheeks is the same texture, taste, as Jeremiah kisses them, leaning back with Jerome in his arms, letting Jerome fall against his wounded shoulder. In Greek mythology, the dead are drawn to spilt blood; it can temporarily return to them the semblance of life. Will Jerome stir, now, slack meat twitching then dancing under Jeremiah’s hands? Jeremiah touches his hand to his shoulder, rubs at it until he feels moisture. He touches his bloody fingers to Jerome’s lips.  
“No?” he says, then licks the blood off of his fingers. It was really just to see what would happen. Jerome is much easier to deal with this way, all of that light and color crumpled up, snuffed out.  
It’s difficult moving dead weight, especially with his shoulder, so Jeremiah has to content himself with just opening Jerome’s clothes. The Y-incision buckles the skin and flesh of his torso, giving it the appearance of uncooked dough. The thread stands out, frank and ugly. The stitches are of good quality, though, neat and regular.  
“Finally, someone took care of you,” Jeremiah says, and caresses Jerome’s cheek.  
When he presses on Jerome’s belly, he feels something odd. It takes him a moment to realize that this is probably the plastic bag containing Jerome’s internal organs. The ancient Egyptians used to place them in fine ceramic jars, each with a god to guard it. It’s the price of modernity, Jeremiah supposes: what you gain in science you lose in poetry. For a moment, he considers breaking the stitches on Jerome’s belly, taking out the bag, and looking inside. What would Jerome’s heart look like? Ordinary. It could scarcely be anything else. In the end, it was just an organ. You want it to be black, though, or knotted, twisted, somehow. It should be like a fetal shark, a monstrous and hungry thing, curled in on itself wretchedly in a bath of brine. It’s just a muscle, though. Everyone knows that.  
He lies down on top of Jerome, touches the stitched incision and the smooth skin next to it. It’s too smooth. Nothing living is that smooth. Beneath it, the muscle lies all wrong. He looks at Jerome’s face. Jerome looks at nothing. He kisses Jerome’s mouth again, undoes their pants, finds a comfortable position and a useful angle. The skin beneath Jerome’s collar feels the closest to living, so that’s where Jeremiah kisses him. He reaches down between Jerome’s legs, but what he feels there is like an empty glove. He touches all the same, futilely, for the futility. It’s sort of like a joke. The stiff that wasn’t stiff at all.  
“You like that, don’t you?” Jeremiah says.  
No one answers.  
Of course no one answers.  
Only an idiot or a madman would expect an answer.  
Who do you think you’re dealing with?  
He’s dripping sweat. He feels like he’ll never come. The scent rising from Jerome is more intense, a grotesque parody of candy and flowers. Sweets for the sweet. His body heat slightly warms Jerome, but it’s still not unlike humping a leather cushion. Finally, he loses the bet with himself, lets himself think of Bruce. A strange, fragile thought, like a bioluminscent tendril in the ocean’s depths. Unexpectedly, it makes him sort of appreciate Jerome. Jerome belongs to Jeremiah. Always belonged to him. Now, Jerome is finally in a position to be worth owning. Finally, Jerome is making himself useful. He kisses Jerome’s mouth. He imagines Bruce kissing him back. He hadn’t let himself really consider until now. How it might actually feel. It would feel…  
Living.  
Jeremiah heaves a great sigh.  
He redresses himself. He wipes Jerome’s belly clean, then spends a long moment, too long, asking himself if he really gives a good goddamn if someone happens into the crypt and finds Jerome lying next to his casket with his clothes disarrayed and his cock out.  
Sighing, he redresses Jerome. But he will be damned if he tries to move that casket again.  
Then he’s done.  
He looks at Jerome, now propped up against the casket with his hands in his lap, in what the fanciful might call a contrite posture. “So long.”  
No, he’s not done.  
Maybe one last kiss...


	2. Oh, Gentlemen, Swallow Your Prayers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Do you still feel thirsty now?

Trouble will always find you.  
It is, of course, looking.  
It’s not happenstance. It’s not bad luck. Some people are staked out by it like an animal has a regular place to sleep. You become familiar to it, warm and pleasant. Trouble starts to think that you’re its friend. It is, of course, a living thing.  
Bruce truly believes this.  
He’s never seen the city this dark. It should be terrifying, and it is, in a shallow kind of way, like when you’re balancing someplace high. There are only so many ways that it can kill you, though. Really only one. You just have to make sure not to fall. Somehow, the night is like this. If you can balance on its edge, you’ll be all right. You’ll be scared, but you’ll be…  
You’ll be happy.  
Your skin, your bones, your guts, your nerves will sing.  
Maybe it always was your friend.  
It’s like sorting different kinds of objects. The victims, he pushes to the side, with a brusque “Go,” if they can go, or just leans against a wall as gently as he can if they’re unable to go. The criminals, he pushes out in front of him, lets them swing at him, lets them miss, and then takes them apart. After that… someone else will come and sweep them all away. Who, or what, or how, or when, Bruce can’t imagine. He can’t think of this, now. Dimly, he feels guilt, like a wound he’s trying to convince himself he’s too high on adrenaline to notice. That’s a lie. You’re always aware of your own pain; it belongs to you, like a limb or an organ. You’re only sometimes lucky enough not to care. The guilt is like that. If anyone asks-- he just wasn’t thinking.  
Who’s going to ask?  
No one else exists.  
What?  
Yes. That’s right. No one else exists.  
His pulse is all around him, like it’s somehow outside of him, part of the darkness, pressing itself onto him. The darkness is oily, soft, doughy, endless. Tiny sounds prick him like pins, and he follows, and he separates, and he keeps going. He feels solid, strong, like something carved, not born, not made of flesh. He’ll do this forever. The night will oblige. It will never end. No one will come looking for him. He’ll be forgotten. He’ll be free.  
No, he won’t, because his body can only stay awake for so long, and fatigue will march him like a dumb animal as the sun slowly rises to the GCPD, where he’ll at first watch silently and warily, and then approach. Before he can try the front door, it will open, and he’ll be snatched inside by Harvey Bullock, who’ll fold him into a rough embrace, leaning far too much of his weight on him, before asking him what the fuck he thinks he’s doing traipsing around the city. There are explanations, then an offer of instant oatmeal and a place to sleep, which he’ll accept, all of the night drained out of him.  
It’s dark again when he wakes. Lucius is sitting at the table where Bruce ate his oatmeal, working on a small machine by lamplight.  
“And good morning to you,” Lucius says, like Bruce has merely slept through breakfast.  
“Lucius,” Bruce says, sitting up, “what are you doing here?”  
“The same thing you are: trying to help however I can.” The way he says it makes Bruce want to tell him the truth.   
What is the truth?  
“Yeah,” Bruce says.  
“Try to eat something before you go out again,” Lucius says, not looking up from his work.  
“How do you know I’m going out again?”  
Lucius looks at him. Suddenly, Bruce wants to cover himself, but he’s already covered. Maybe cover his face, throw the blanket over himself. He could hide under there forever, speaking from behind the blanket. He’d have to cut eyeholes in it.  
“Can you tell Alfred that I’m all right?” Bruce asks.  
“I will,” says Lucius.  
“Thank you.”  
“Be careful, Bruce.”  
Bruce can’t think of what to say, so he nods.  
Trouble finds him. He’s not far from the precinct when the shapes begin coming out of the dark at him. Maybe they were waiting for him. The thought should chill him, but it doesn’t. They must think he’s special, to crowd around in the dark, anticipating his appearance. He hopes that it was worth the wait. He’s struck, and it hurts, but he doesn’t care. In a strange way, it feeds him, makes him feel stronger; like he might have momentarily doubted, but now, he’s sure that he can go on, and it’s all he wants to do. Someone’s laughing. Who could laugh at a time like this?  
Then, he’s alone. The people he was fighting have fallen down or run away, and it’s just him. He keeps moving. He doesn’t fear getting lost. He fancies that he can feel the precinct, like birds can feel magnetic north. Lucius told him that. There’s something in his skull that guides him back home.  
Not home. The precinct isn’t home. Home is far away, tucked deep down inside like part of you that you’ve never seen but you know is there. Home is at the bottom of the ocean. Home is in the past, and safe as things that are in the past are safe. Home is something that’s already happened, that’s over, so you don’t have to worry about it anymore.  
The nighttime streets are so beautiful. Even with the windows carved out of storefronts, and small fires clapping here and there, and cars resting empty with their doors open on the sidewalks. The air is soft and cool, and the darkness is so forgiving. It knows you, and loves you, anyway. Overhead, the moon is huge, and vibrates with light. There’s excitement in the light, like the sweat of anticipation, like a trembling hand. It’s not white, but golden. Looking up at it, Bruce smiles.  
Then:  
He hears:  
“Waiting for a falling star?”  
Bruce is aware, now, of all of the places he’s uncovered. Just his face, his throat, and his hands, but he still thinks of feeling earlier the need to hide himself. It’s different, now, though. Lucius looked, and Lucius knows things, but Lucius doesn’t see. Somehow, there’s a distinction.  
“Jeremiah,” Bruce says needlessly, his voice scraping his throat. “I’m taking you to the GCPD.”  
“Citizen’s arrest, huh?” Jeremiah says coolly, holding out his hands, palms up. “Didn’t bring your handcuffs, did you?”  
“You’re going to pay for what you did to Selina,” Bruce says, because it’s true, and because it’s something to say. Selina is also very far away, but she needs to be closer. She needs to be, somehow, where Bruce can see her, even as he needs to her to stay far away. How can someone be faraway and close at the same time?  
That’s stupid.  
“Probably,” Jeremiah says, “but you’ll have to catch me, first.”  
Then- he just runs.  
This is stupid, too.  
It has to be a trap. It’s obviously a trap. There’s no way that it isn’t a trap. Why can’t Bruce stop chasing him? Even Bruce doesn’t know. Knows nothing. Feels nothing, but the air scouring his lungs, and the muscles working in his legs, and his heart beating in his cranium.  
It’s a dead end.  
I told you this was stupid.  
“Well, it looks like you caught me, fair and square,” Jeremiah says, inching out of the shadows into the moonlight, showing a little bit of himself at a time. Bruce absolutely was not startled. He did not gasp.  
“What the hell?” Bruce says.  
“You get to do what the long arm of the law couldn’t.” Then, Jeremiah’s hands are high on Bruce’s arms, moving down, bringing Bruce’s arms up to his shoulders as he eases them back into a pool of moonlight until he’s between Bruce and a wall. “Assuming,” Jeremiah continues, “that you can hold me.”  
What the hell is happening? Is this… a weird game? Fleetingly, Bruce remembers something about Selina, some contest or game, and before he can stop himself, he’s pushing it away. What’s she doing here, he thinks irritably. She’s not supposed to be here. Now isn’t when he needs her. When he needs her, he’ll think of her, then. Something’s happening, something she doesn’t need to see.   
With icy clarity, Bruce realizes that he could kill Jeremiah, right there, in that alley. No one would know. If anyone saw, what would they say-- they watched Bruce Wayne kill a clown when the lights were out? Who would believe them? There are cars in the street. Selina taught him how to hotwire a car. Once Jeremiah was dead, Bruce could put him in the trunk of the car, drive to the river, and let the entire car sink to the bottom. He would tell Alfred, and Alfred would be angry, but he’d have to understand. Selina would only be angry that she hadn’t had a chance to do it, herself. Anyone else would believe that it had been self defense. Someone else had put the body in the trunk of the car, and driven the car into the river.   
But why would someone do that?   
Why does anyone do anything?  
“Cat got your tongue?” Jeremiah asks, and without thinking, Bruce hits him. It’s not very hard, and Bruce wonders why he pulled his punch, why he didn’t just knock Jeremiah out; why it seemed more important to hurt than to incapacitate him.  
“Shut up about her,” Bruce hears himself say in a low, creeping voice he didn’t know he had.  
“Make me,” Jeremiah says. He sounds nothing like Jerome, he doesn’t even look like him anymore, but he reminds Bruce of Jerome enough that it feels good to hit him, harder, now, hard enough to draw blood.  
That’s wrong, though. Jeremiah isn’t like Jerome. Jerome made Jeremiah this way, didn’t he? There’s still a person in there, right? It’s just a chemical, and the effects of chemicals can be reversed. Dr. Strange raised people from the dead. If you can do that, something like this is nothing. Buried alive in this… thing, this sarcophagus is Jeremiah Valeska, who was once a real person. You know what you have to do with real people, don’t you?  
“I’m taking you to the precinct,” Bruce says, “I’m going to find someone to fix you.”  
“What? You think that there’s something wrong with me? Bruce, I’m hurt.”  
“You’re sick,” Bruce says, hurting with what it means, hurting with wrongs that can’t be punished, because they’re wrongs on top of wrongs, and the person who’s really responsible is beyond anything that could be done to them. What do you do when that happens? You save what you can.  
Alfred will be disappointed. He’ll cover it, but that’s how he’ll be. The anger at Bruce killing Jeremiah would have faded, but the lack of comprehension at Bruce letting Jeremiah live, trying to help him, will never go. Selina will be furious. She’ll never speak to Bruce again. His chest hurts.  
“No, Bruce. This is who I always was. I just… no longer saw the point of hiding it. You know the story about me, and Jerome, and the cake knife? It was just something we used to do to each other. I did it to him, and he did it to me. It was a thrill, feeling the edge of the blade up against your pulse. Like cutting a heartbeat in two. We grew up poor, you see, had to make our own fun. But Jerome only had room in his little head for that kind of fun. He never dreamt of anything more than childish games. I wanted a real life. The only way to get that was to force our mother to believe that he’d tried to kill me, that he was going to keep trying until he succeeded, so that she’d send me away.” Bruce looks down. Jeremiah’s hands are moving. He’s taking off his gloves. “Do you see this?” He holds up his left pinkie. “Notice that part of the finger is missing. I did that. I cut off the tip of my finger, and told my mother that it was Jerome. I got the life I wanted. Now, what do you think of that, Bruce?”  
“No.”  
“Yes. That’s what I’ve learned: it feels good to tell the truth. Would you like to know something else that’s true?”  
Bruce doesn’t get a chance to answer, because Jeremiah is kissing him. He tastes blood. Panic whips through him. The toxin wasn’t a viral agent, but it could still be transmissible. Is this going to happen to him? Is he going to lose himself?  
He must have lost something, because somehow, it doesn’t occur to him to pull away. It’s not real, he decides. It’s too soft, and it’s too slow, and it’s too gentle, and aside from the blood, it’s too normal, so it can’t be happening. If he opens his mouth, it’s just to breathe. If something happens after that, it’s not his fault. If he lets it keep happening, it’s only because he doesn’t know what to do. He forgot.  
This is stupid. Bruce has kissed people before. He’s even kissed boys before. It’s not like this. It feels good, but it doesn’t feel so good that you forget how to live. It’s the toxin that changed Jeremiah. It’s changing Bruce. This is how the world ends.  
The world already ended.  
If the world has already ended, and it’s still ending, now, and maybe, it never stops ending, but is always in a state of ending… does it matter if you beat the criminal to death, or let him put his tongue in your mouth? Both are wrong, but if kissing him stops you from committing murder, or murdering him stops you from kissing him, which is less wrong? What are the limits of pity, compassion? A minute ago, you were ready to take him away to a hospital for treatment, to bring him back to his senses- to then do what? You can’t punish a person for something they did when they were sick. Nothing you could do to him would undo the damage he’s done, anyway. If you kill him, it only really hurts you. It means that you were too stupid to think of another way to solve your problem. It’s failure, and nothing hurts worse than that. Until Bruce can figure it out, he’d better at least hold onto Jeremiah. The moment will come when he knows what to do, and then, he’ll have Jeremiah right there.  
Bruce is aware that he shouldn’t be enjoying this. The awareness is in the place where everything else goes when it’s night, when it’s dark, and he’s alone, and he’s free. Jeremiah is moving against him, making soft sounds that he may not know he’s making. He tastes less like blood, now. Bruce thinks of how Jeremiah used to look. Grave and tired in his glasses. Younger than his age when he took them off. Pale, but not this pale. Bruce never really thought he looked like Jerome. There was someone else, behind the eyes. Jeremiah was lying, Bruce decides. None of that really happened.  
“I’m going to fix you,” he says, turning Jeremiah’s head to the side. He says it again, whispers it into Jeremiah’s ear, feels Jeremiah’s body shake. It could, Bruce realizes, be laughter. It’s all right. What people do when they’re sick doesn’t matter. It’s not real. Bruce can’t help but think of the cake knife as he kisses Jeremiah’s throat. It was a lie. He’s not looking for a scar as he loosens Jeremiah’s tie and unbuttons his collar. A scar would prove nothing, anyway; just that the skin was broken. A scar doesn’t tell you who made it.  
“You know about the concrete room, don’t you?” Jeremiah says, breathing heavily, “The room where I was going to keep Jerome?”  
Bruce says nothing.  
“I was going to kill him, naturally, but what do you think I was going to do with him before I killed him, Bruce?”  
Bruce looks at him. Jeremiah is smiling placidly. It has to be a lie. No one could say something like that, and look so calm. Not even a crazy person. “Why are you telling me this?”  
“Because I want you to know, Bruce, that even when I was fucking him, I would have been thinking of you.”  
Bruce wants to say that this doesn’t make any sense, because they didn’t even meet until after Jerome escaped from the room and tried to kill Jeremiah and the detectives in the maze, but he can’t because Jeremiah pulls him close, and kisses him again. Now, everything is gone. All of the sense and nonsense is gone. It’s not like rubbing up against some stranger for the thrill of knowing you’d done it, and it’s not a drunken fumble, and it’s not you and your friend daring each other back and forth until you’re both undressed. It’s sick, and it’s weird, and it’s wrong, and it hurts in a weird way, and as hot or as drunk or as messy as it might have been in the past, it was never like this. This isn’t normal kissing, even if the mechanics are the same. You can’t hear those kinds of things, and not-- If you feel something, it’s just shock, or morbid curiosity. But Bruce suddenly knows, with horrible certainty:  
Normal people aren’t like this. Normal people don’t end up in places like this, and they don’t let themselves be kissed by monsters, and they don’t hear the things Bruce has heard and not- they don’t- he wouldn’t exactly say that he likes it. He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t understand what Jeremiah was talking about. He wasn’t, a minute ago, weighing the relative merits of beating Jeremiah to death and making out with him. It’s not like that for Bruce. The two don’t go together.  
Suddenly, jerking Tommy off in a hotel bathroom seems so simple, and like it happened so long ago.  
Bruce is fucked.  
Once, he’d felt weird wondering if Jeremiah had freckles all over; if what they said about redheads was true. This also seems very far away. When Jeremiah is sane again, will he want to talk to Bruce, to even look at him? That’s why Bruce should stop. He should stop, because it’s not fair to the real person who’s going to have to wake up knowing what he did when he was a monster. Bruce doesn’t stop. He keeps kissing Jeremiah, whose lip has split open again. Bruce tastes blood, and he’s not scared of it anymore. He bites Jeremiah’s neck, feels Jeremiah move like he’s trying to fight Bruce. He pins Jeremiah’s arms at his sides, feels him relax, feels his body slip against Bruce, feels the air press out of him in a long sigh.  
“Jerome wanted this, too. It was in that ridiculous little diary of his.”  
“I don’t believe you,” Bruce says, just to say something. Wait-- with which one of them?  
Jeremiah looks at him with solemnity that would be laughable if this whole thing weren’t so beyond… anything. “I’d never lie to you, Bruce.”  
“I have to take you to the precinct,” Bruce says. It even sounds halfhearted to him.  
“One last request from a condemned man,” Jeremiah says, and Bruce doesn’t have a chance to tell Jeremiah to stop playing games, or to repeat that he’s going to help Jeremiah, because Jeremiah slips his hand between Bruce’s legs, and that’s it.  
It’s his left hand, the one with the pinkie that is missing its tip.  
Oh, God.  
This is stupid.  
Oh, God.  
All of that work, all of that conviction, all of that discipline.  
It’s all going to fail you.  
He lets himself lean into Jeremiah’s hand, lets himself be handled. Lets Jeremiah kiss his mouth. Lets Jeremiah undo his pants and put his hand inside. It’s not the wildest thing he’s ever done, or the weirdest place he’s ever done it, so it has to be- No. Yes. It has to be that it’s Jeremiah. Admitting it makes it easier, makes him want to do it, now, instead of just going along. It’s like getting punched. It’s like running around alone at night.  
The darkness knows you, and loves you, anyway.  
Jeremiah turns him, so that his back is to the wall, and kneels. It’s all warmth, softness, and a long, slow tug that makes him hurt even more than he did before. It makes him want to be kind. To be weak. Only at the end does he feel himself getting pushy, impatient. He closes his eyes. He holds Jeremiah’s head in place. It’s dark. If someone hears him they’ll think that it’s just some stranger out in the night being hurt, and be glad that it isn’t them.  
Isn’t it funny how the two sounds are so similar?  
Jeremiah stands. In the moonlight, a dark streak is visible near Jeremiah’s mouth. His lip split open again. Is there blood on--  
There must be.  
Bruce feels-  
Bruce feels-  
He pulls Jeremiah close to him, kisses him, tastes the blood, and other things. He holds Jeremiah against him, feels the way he moves, feels him want it. Touches him through his pants, and feels his hips jerk. Let Jeremiah rub against his hand until Jeremiah comes.  
Then, they just stand there. There’s no bottle to reach for, no car to call to drive Bruce home, no witty, ironically detached comment to make. Looking at the ground, Bruce zips up his pants.  
Jeremiah says quietly, “You can take me in, now.”  
He could explain the blood away, but not all the rest. Bruce knows that, now. Now, he understands. But Jeremiah is looking at him with his strange, pale eyes that always, to spite everything, just look sad. He’s sad, and he’s bleeding, and this has to be proof, proof piled on top of proof, that Jeremiah is not well.  
What do you do with a person when they’re sick?  
Bruce turns around, and leaves the alley.  
And he goes home.


End file.
